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Mecklenburg County Manager Dena Diorio presented her 2025-26 budget proposal to County Commissioners last week. And despite cuts and a proposed tax rate increase, she included a recommendation to fully fund Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ roughly $667 million funding request.
We’ve spent a lot of time reporting on the CMS budget over the last few months, so this week I wanted to explore another part of Diorio’s budget request that is still an important part of the local education landscape: pre-K.
Diorio proposed an additional $3.4 million to expand the county’s MECK Pre-K program with 10 new classrooms. That comes as MECK Pre-K officials have reported seeing a spike in early enrollment — and amid a growing concern about boosting CMS’ early literacy scores and preparing kids for kindergarten.
“The research is clear, that 4-year-olds that have access to a high-quality pre-K experience do better over their lifetimes than children that do not,” Diorio told me about the decision. “And there’s nobody really investing in education for 4-year-olds. And education is a priority for the county, and so we need to make sure that our 4-year-olds are ready for kindergarten.”
Diorio indicated that the expansion would likely focus on the northern and southern parts of the county, which she described as “gap areas” in the program.
It comes as a recent national report highlighted some headwinds for pre-K — including right here in North Carolina.
First off, the good news: the National Institute for Early Education Research’s annual State of Pre-School report, looking at the 2023-24 school year, found North Carolina improved its ranking from 29th to 28th in the country for preschool access for 4-year-olds. Enrollment increased by 1,620 from the following year.
The report credited North Carolina for being a longtime leader in pre-K quality. The state operates a separate pre-K program called NC Pre-K. It’s one of four public pre-K options available to Mecklenburg County residents. The others are MECK Pre-K, Head Start and CMS’ Bright Beginnings program.
But the report also noted some red flags.
NC Pre-K’s expansion has benefitted temporarily from COVID-19 relief funding.
“The North Carolina General Assembly had the opportunity to approved the Governor’s recommended increase of $197 million for FY 2023-2025 to keep NC Pre-K viable and strong for North Carolina children, but they failed to do so,” said Steven Barnett, NIEER’s senior director and founder, in a press release.
The report also raised concern about the slipping of some quality standards for NC Pre-K in that budget cycle — it allowed for an increase in class sizes from 18 to 20 and increased teacher-to-student ratios from 1:9 to 1:10.
Preschool, like public schools, are also wrapped up in the national uncertainty surrounding federal funding. The Trump administration has been weighing cuts to the Head Start pre-K program. Earlier this year, an initial funding freeze forced many Head Start programs to temporarily close.
The NIEER report estimates more than 13,000 3- and 4-year-olds in North Carolina could lose access to Head Start if federal funding is eliminated.
